THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

248 The Harmony of Virtueimmensely helps this effect, for it allows of the same commonrhymes recurring but usually with a difference in one or moreof their company.*The prose of Kalidasa's dialogue is the most unpretentiousand admirable prose in Sanskrit literature; it is perfectly simple,easy in pitch and natural in tone with a shining, smiling, ripplinglucidity, a soft carolling gait like a little girl running along in ameadow and smiling back at you as she goes. There is the trueimage of it, a quiet English meadow with wild flowers on a brightsummer morning, breezes abroad, the smell of hay in the neighbourhood,honeysuckle on the bank, hedges full of convolvulusesor wild roses, a ditch on one side with cress or forget-menotsand nothing pronounced or poignant except perhaps a straywhiff of meadow-sweet from a distance. This admirable unobtrusivecharm and just observed music (Coleridge) makes it runeasily into verse in English. In translating one has at first somevague idea of reproducing the form as well as the spirit of theSanskrit, rendering verse stanza by verse stanza and prose movementby prose movement. But it will soon be discovered thatexcept in the talk of the buffoon and not always then Kalidasa'sprose never evokes its just echo, never finds its answering pitch,tone or quality in English prose. The impression it creates is inno way different from Shakespeare's verse taken anywhere atits easiest and sweetest:Your lord does know my mind. I cannot love him,Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;In voices well divulged, free, learned and valiant;And in dimension and the shape of nature,A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him.He might have took his answer long ago. 1Or again, still more close in its subtle and telling simplicity:1Twelfth Night. Act I, Sc. 5.